Friday, July 11, 2008

Doctorow's brilliant essay --The Unfeeling President --appeared originally in the September 9th issue of the Easthampton Star. Doctorow could not have known then that Dennis Kucinich, having introduced some 35 articles of impoeachment, would now say of our 'unfeeling' President: "There has been a breach of faith between the Commander in Chief and the troops."

There is no denying that the source of Bush's 'unfeeling' is that of an even earlier 'breach of faith' with the American people. One who is morally dead may not feel, may not experience faith. Bush never intended to 'lead' this nation. He intended to destroy it --our Constitution, our heritage, our most cherished traditions, indeed, our lives.

Our nation's Constitution, called a 'goddamned piece of paper', is derived from the ancient, venerable notion that the legitimacy of government is its contract with the people. Contracts not supported by faith are not worth the paper they are written on. Bush had in mind his subversion of our charter when in a temper tantrum he screamed the nine words that alone should have impeached and removed him from office: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!"

The following brilliant and insightful essay by novelist E.L. Doctorow appeared in the Sept. 9 edition of the Easthampton Star. I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944, General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life; they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you must.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the President who does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. A litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

There is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember when millions of people around the world marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into, and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report: he becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail.

How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America, given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn, but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

--The Unfeeling President, E.L. Doctorow

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of American literature. On a shortlist that might also include Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow is generally considered to be among the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Long celebrated for his vivid evocations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American life (particularly New York life), Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal.

Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931, and, like the novelist Everett in City of God, attended the Bronx High School of Science. After graduating with honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army, which stationed him in Germany. In 1954, he married Helen Setzer. They have three children. Doctorow was senior editor for New American Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until 1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California, Irvine.

With The Book of Daniel, his third novel, Doctorow emerged as an important American novelist with a strongly political bent. A fictional retelling of the notorious Rosenberg spy case, the novel deftly evokes the complex anxieties of Cold War America, shuttling back and forth in time from the 1950s, when Paul and Roselle Isaacson are convicted and electrocuted, to the late 1960s, when their troubled son, Daniel, a grad student at Columbia, must deal with the consequences of his unusual birthright. The Book of Daniel was adapted in 1983 into the film, Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton and directed by Sidney Lumet. Four years after The Book of Daniel came Ragtime, a dazzling reimagining of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century by means of a plot that, like City of God, ingeniously brings together real-life figures—such as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, and Emma Goldman—with an array of invented characters. Ragtime was named one of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century by the editorial board of the Modern Library and was adapted into a successful Broadway musical in 1998. The March was published in 2005.

Widely acclaimed for the beauty of his prose, his innovative narratives, his feel for atmospherics, and above all for his talent for evoking the past in a way that makes it at once mysterious and familiar, Doctorow has created one of the most substantial bodies of work of any living American writer.

The US District Court in California has ruled that President George W. Bush is a felon. The ruling stems from the case of Al-Harmain Islamic Foundation Inc. v Bush, a case which will now be remembered as making it official that Bush's program of 'warrantless spying' is illegal.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously -- at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics -- to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.

The complete story at Sott.net outlines the sorry history of how the Bush administration has defined the law of this nation as well as the laws of common sense and decency to carry out a program that would have made even Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover blush.

It would seem to me that it's now well established that Bush is indictable in a Federal Court. It is also my understanding that any sitting federal judge can now --upon his/her own motion --convene a federal grand jury to investigate Bush's many violations of federal law, not the least of which are US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441, which make Bush subject to the penalty of death for each death of his war of aggression in Iraq.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

Editor's note: This article is part of a Salon investigative series on spying inside the United States by the Bush administration. Research support for the article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.

Spying on Americans without warrants, charges based on secret evidence, a small town divided by fear. Welcome to the world of Bush's "specially designated global terrorists."

May 19, 2008 | RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, and ASHLAND, Ore.

One day in March 2004, Soliman Hamd Al-Buthe, a former member of Saudi Arabia's national basketball team and a government official in the city of Riyadh, picked up his phone for an urgent call with two American lawyers in Washington, DC Most of the call concerned a growing confrontation between the US government and the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Ashland, Ore., the US branch of a global Saudi Arabian charity organization under investigation for possible links to terrorism. Al-Buthe had been an advisor to Al-Haramain from 1995 to 2002 and was a member of the Oregon foundation's board of directors. Just weeks prior to the call, the foundation -- a respected fixture in the Ashland community run for years by an Iranian-American Muslim named Pete Seda -- had been raided by US law enforcement agents.

It is the Bush administration which has pressed this issue, an issue that has come up, until Bush, just four times in 23 years. But since 911 and the Bush wars for which it is fraudulently cited in justification, Bush has seized upon a Supreme Court ruling of 1953 to justify sweeping authority far beyond anything that could have been envisioned by the courts. Mere mention of two words --'state secrets' --was always enough to get a wink and nod from a federal judge. Things have changed. There is the possibility that George W. Bush is under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury as we write this.

Federal grand juries do two things: They investigate to determine if federal crimes have been committed; and they indict, or bring criminal charges against, those whom the grand jury believes committed federal crimes. To indict, the grand jurors must have probable cause to believe the persons indicted did violate federal criminal law.

Grand juries offer prosecutors several advantages in conducting a criminal investigation, especially a high-profile, factually complicated investigation. For one thing, grand juries operate in secret; this not only gives prosecutors the ability to shield the evidence they are gathering from disclosure to the press and others, it can also encourage people to cooperate with a grand jury. Unless a witness reveals that he or she testified before a federal grand jury, no one ever needs to know that occurred, and since the transcripts of grand jury testimony are secret, no one will know what the witness said. This can be an advantage in an investigation, such as an investigation into terrorism, where witnesses may be afraid of retaliation if they cooperate with investigators.

Grand juries also give prosecutors the power to subpoena witnesses and evidence from around the country and, in some circumstances, from other countries, as well. (Getting evidence from abroad is discussed below.) If federal agents want to interview someone, the person can refuse to speak to them; this is true even if the person is arrested as a material witness, because persons who are arrested can invoke the Miranda rights to silence and to an attorney. The U.S. Supreme Court has held, however, that the Miranda rights are not available to witnesses subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. Unlike someone being interrogated by federal agents, a grand jury witness not only has not right to silence or counsel, he or she is required to answer questions posed by the prosecutor working with the grand jury and by the grand jurors. A grand jury witness can refuse to answer if he or she can invoke the Fifth Amendment as to a question, but the privilege must be claimed as to each question and the prosecutor can challenge a witness' ability to invoke the privilege.

It is against both the letter of the law, logic, and common sense to allow Bush carte blanche to dismiss out-of-hand legal challenges to his various assumptions of dictatorial powers. This is crucial! Bush wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and 'terror' can be shown to be criminal and fraudulent. No other criminal defendant could simply invoke 'executive privilege' in order to have the smoking gun evidence against him thrown out of court. And Bush must no be allowed to do so either!

In this case, the evidence that must be allowed, the evidence that must be weighed by a federal grand jury will prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the panoply of frauds and lies Bush perpetrated upon the sovereign people of the US amount to high treason, mass murder, and war crimes for which US Codes themselves demand the death penalty.

A very important and related story at Alternet: Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House. Bush should worry. Any competent prosecutor could make an open and shut case right now that George W. Bush, who ordered the illegal attack and invasion of Iraq, is personally guilty of war crimes that demand the death penalty.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

If Bush can immunize himself for his own crimes after he's committed them, then he can, likewise, prosecute you for breaking laws for which he has yet to issue a decree! There is a word for this: tyranny! The people of England beheaded a King for less egregious offenses. This outcome has flowed from a single spring: GOP psychopathy!

Bush has effectively repealed the Bill of Rights while immunizing himself after the fact from prosecution for laws he's already broken, specifically, federal statutes prescribing the death penalty for war crimes resulting in death. These crimes should be listed at the top of the indictment against Bush.

There are, in fact, no exceptions under the law. Not even for 'Presidents'. Certainly not for those who have convinced themselves that they are 'dictators'.

Over the years we came to expect nothing less than excellent reporting from Bill Moyers and it reasonable to conclude that that is the very reason Moyers is not seen regularly on PBS today. Since the stolen election of 2000, every journalist of integrity has paid a price. In his analysis of the motion picture --The Lives of Others --Moyers quoted Roger Hebert who had made the obvious analogy between the Bush administration and that of East Germany during the height of the Cold War.

"The movie is relevant today, as our [own] government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany. They destroyed it by making it a country it's most loyal citizens could no longer believe in."

Moyer's has said what many still fear to say: a secret government has mushroomed in the United States.

Bush's criminal and unconstitutional assault on the Bill of Rights as much as the well-planned campaign of frauds intended to justify the attack and invasion of Iraq stem from an identifiable 'conservative mindset', a pathology, which psychologists have lately categorized as 'psychopathy'. Bob Altermeyer calls these people RWA, or Right Wing Authoritarians.

I like 'psychopath'! It's shorter, precise, and has a longer history. As a result of his numerous interviews of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Dr. Gustav Gilbert identified a common psychopathic symptom --an 'utter lack of empathy'! On this subject, I recommend John Dean's 'Conservatives Without Consciences', in which Dean cites the work of Bob Altemeyer who sums up his own work accurately and wittily in The Authoritarians.

'Authoritarians' are submissive to authority as were Hitler's Nazi minions but they are, like Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush, tyrannical when they are themselves in power or positions of 'authority'. This mentality is most surely the origin of the Nazi war criminal defense: "But ve vere only folloving orters!"

With eagerly subservient Republican majorities controlling both houses of Congress, Bush and his vice-president could do anything they wanted. And so they did. Greed ruled, the rich got big, big tax cuts, the environment took one body blow [190] after another, religious opinions decided scientific issues, the country went to war, and so on. Bush and his allies had the political and military power to impose their will at home and abroad, it seemed, and they most decidedly used it.

A stunning, and widely overlooked example of the arrogance that followed streaked across the sky in 2002 when the administration refused to sign onto the International Criminal Court. This court was established by over a hundred nations, including virtually all of the United States’ allies, to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and so on when the country for whom they acted would not or could not do the prosecuting itself. It is a “court of last resort” in the human race’s defense against brutality.

Why on earth would the United States, as one of the conveners of the Nuremberg Trials and conceivers of the charge, “crimes against humanity,” want nothing to do with this agreement? The motivation did not become clear until later. But not only did America refuse to ratify the treaty, in 2002 Congress passed an act that allowed the United States to punish nations that did join in the international effort to prosecute the worst crimes anyone could commit! Talk about throwing your weight around, and in a way that insulted almost every friend you had on the planet.

But the social dominators classically overreached. Using military power in Iraq to “get Saddam” produced, not a shining democracy, but a lot of dead Americans, at least fifty times as many dead Iraqis, and the predicted civil war. The “war on terrorism” backfired considerably, as enraged Muslims around the world, with little or no connection to al Qaeda, formed their own “home-grown” terrorist cells bent on suicide attacks--especially after news of American atrocities in Iraq raced around the globe. Occupying Iraq tied down most of America’s mobile ground forces, preventing their use against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan which had supported the 9/11 attacks, and making American troops easy targets in the kind of guerilla warfare that produces revenge-driven massacres within even elite units.

Both Altemeyer and Dean are confirmed in their opinions of the state of the American conservative movement by 'conservative' criticism leveled at them. It is characterized by fallacious appeals to authority and orthodoxy --tactics that are observed to be rampant throughout 'conservative' politics.

Their [Altermeyer, Dean] work does not appear to have earned widespread acceptance among academic psychologists. No matter: in Dean’s mind, as he spends the bulk of Conservatives Without Conscience arguing, the theory of the authoritarian personality establishes the malevolence of conservatives as scientific fact.

Dean, of course, speaks from the 'experience' of having been a 'Goldwater Conservative'. I speak from the experience of having interviewed numerous 'conservatives' and, in the process collecting a series of 'self-reinforcing' rationalizations.

Is it true, for example, that “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us”? Maybe Altemeyer thinks that anyone who answers “yes” pines for a charismatic nationalist leader a la—who else?—Adolf Hitler. But, in fact, any effective political leader could fit the description. In the civil-rights era, for example, did not our country “desperately need” (to rectify injustice) a “mighty leader” (he certainly had a large following) such as the sainted Martin Luther King Jr. who was willing to “do what it takes” (organize marches and boycotts) to “stamp out” (end) “sinfulness” (segregation) and “radical new ways” (racist backlash)? Logical consistency would compel nearly everyone to agree with the statement, no matter how provocatively phrased. If it turns out that only conservatives say that they agree, this shows only that conservatives understand the meaning of words.

--Conformity Without Conscience, The American Conservative

The 'refutation' misses the point that 'conservatives' --statistically --will never recognize any other condition. In other words, anystatus quo --especially those caused by the conservative mindset itself--will always be seen by the RWA as requiring a strong leader. Nothing is proven. The 'conservative' mindset just repeats a faulty premise or, worse, mistakes a pre-conceived notion for one. The conservative mindset may never notice or grasp the significance of evidence that the 'mindset' itself and policies issuing it from it are the cause of the status quo cited to justify war, torture, or even atrocities. This is most certainly the case with 'terrorism' cited to justify wars of aggression and torture which are themselves the root cause of 'terrorism'. You have thus entered the circular, self-reinforced world of GOP delusion! [See: Terrorism is worse under GOP regimes]

Typically, as predicted by Altemeyer, his studies are dismissed not because they are objectively flawed but because they do not conform to pre-conceived, conservative models of the world.

It does not follow that because Martin Luther King Jr may have been a 'great leader' that he was, therefore, 'authoritarian'. It is interesting that the example of Ghandi was not cited by the conservative authors whose assumptions are predictable and self-reinforcing: that no one but 'authoritarian conservatives' may be great leaders. Conservative logic argues as follows: Martin Luther King was a great leader. Therefore, he must have been an 'authoritarian conservative'. In the GOP/conservative bizarro world, houses precede their foundations, conclusions precede their premises. Welcome to Alice in Wonderland!

That, of course, brings me to yet another symptom to be found in abundance among members of the Bush regime and his many supporters throughout the GOP: delusions! Delusions are typically associated with 'psychoses' --schizophrenia, global psychopathology. I am inclined to assign Bush and his supporters into one of two camps: those who are truly 'delusional' and those who exploit delusions for political gain, i.e, those who know better but tell the lies anyway knowing that they will be eagerly lapped up by those whose belief in them is irrational and symptomatic. The GOP thus feeds upon its own insanity.

Yet another category are those 'Republicans' who may know better but for emotional reasons choose to support Bush. It was Republicans of this sort who supported the disastrous economic policies of Ronald Reagan, 'trickle down' theory, in particular, because it made them 'feel good about themselves'. The tax cuts, they willfully believed, would not merely make them even richer but monies not paid in taxes would somehow 'trickle down' and assuage them of the guilt they might have felt about being petty, greedy, intellectually dishonest members of a self-absorbed and 'psychopathic' elite of 'Right Wing Authoritarians'.

The last string of studies I want to lay before you ... concerns authoritarians’ willingness to hold officials accountable for their misdeeds. Or rather, their lack of willingness--which catches your eye because high RWAs generally favor punishing the bejabbers out of misdoers. But they proved less likely than most people to punish a police officer who beat up a handcuffed demonstrator, or a chief of detectives who assaulted an accused child molester being held in jail, or--paralleling the trial of US Army Lt. William Calley--an Air Force officer convicted of murder after leading unauthorized raids on Vietnamese villages.

...

If some day George W. Bush is indicted for authorizing torture, you can bet your bottom dollar the high RWAs will howl to the heavens in protest. It won’t matter how extensive the torture was, how cruel and sickening it was, how many years it went on, how many prisoners died, how devious Bush was in trying to evade America’s laws and traditional stand against torture, or how many treaties the US
broke. Such an indictment would grind right up against the core of authoritarian followers, and they won’t have it. Maybe they’ll even say, “The president was busy running the war. He didn’t really know. It was all done by Rumsfeld and others.”

--Altermeyer, op cit

Applying standards inequitably must surely stem from the observed inability of 'conservatives' to think logically. 'Conservatives' work backward from conclusions, in a biased search for supporting premises. Dick Cheney is a text-book example! He recently quashed facts not liked by the conservative 'authoritarian' in power; he moved to quash a report that supports the critics of the Bush administration with regard to the greenhouse effect.

"This is the story of a White House and vice president's office that work together to squelch information, to squash it, to stop it from getting to the public so that there would be no information out there, so that there wouldn't be a push for them to act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who appeared with Burnett at a press conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Boxer accused White House Press Secretary Dana Perino of lying about the redaction of Gerberding's testimony and engaging in a cover-up.

It is in this mindset that we find the origins of the GOP attack on the Bill of Rights.

Altermeyer believes that conservatives have a problem with 'evidence' in general. This is an issue that seems especially relevant to the debate about 'torture', a debate in which the 'conservative' defense of Bush is flatly indefensible.

Authoritarian followers aren’t going to question, they’re going to parrot. After all, in the ethnocentric mind “We are the Good Guys and our opponents are abominations”--which is precisely the thinking of the Islamic authoritarian followers who become suicide bombers in Iraq. And if we turn out not to be such good guys, as news of massacres and the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, by the CIA, and by the arms-length “companies” set up to torture prisoners becomes known, authoritarian followers simply don’t want to know. It was just a few, lower level “bad apples.” Didn’t the president say he was sickened by the revelations of torture, and all American wrong-doers would be punished?

...

Sitting in the jury room of the Port Angeles, Washington court house in 1989, Mary Wegmann might have felt she had suddenly been transferred to a parallel 76 universe in some Twilight Zone story. For certain fellow-jury members seemed to have attended a different trial than the one she had just witnessed. They could not remember some pieces of evidence, they invented evidence that did not exist, and they steadily made erroneous inferences from the material that everyone could agree on. Encountering my research as she was later developing her Ph.D. dissertation project, she suspected the people who “got it wrong” had been mainly high RWAs. So she recruited a sample of adults from the Clallam County jury list, and a group of students from Peninsula College and gave them various memory and inference tests. For example, they listened to a tape of two lawyers debating a school segregation case on a McNeil/Lehrer News Hour program. Wegmann found High RWAs indeed had more trouble remembering details of the material they’d encountered, and they made more incorrect inferences on a reasoning test than others usually did. Overall, the authoritarians had lots of trouble simply thinking straight.

Intrigued, I gave the inferences test that Mary Wegmann had used to two large samples of students at my university. In both studies high RWAs went down in flames more than others did. They particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong. To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:

All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea..
Therefore, sharks are fish.

The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, “Because sharks are fish.” In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don’t “get it” that the reasoning matters--especially on a reasoning test.

Authoritarians do not 'infer' well; in other words, as a class, they lack critical thinking skills, logic! They are often fail to execute simple syllogisms.

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality".

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

We should teach people while they are still in school real critical thinking skills! Now --that would shake up the political landscape and blast holes in the 'conventional wisdom'. It would also put more than a few loudmouths, pundits, and poll-impaired consultants out of a job! Somehow --the message must be made clear even to conservatives, in language that even they must understand: torture is not OK! EVER! It is immoral and it is a war crime! Bush is culpable and should be prosecuted.

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

The findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll put the United States alongside countries like Russia, Egypt and the Ukraine and lagging far behind allies like Great Britain, Spain and France in how its citizens view torture.

I have never thought it coincidental that the symptoms of 'psychopathy' precisely describe America's GOP. That has been the case at least since the 1992 GOP national convention in Houston, TX where Republicans, enamored of Ronald Reagan, swooned: "But he made us feel good about ourselves!" Thus -- Ronald Reagan must be forever remembered as a feeble minded 'psychopath' who made an entire 'party' of psychopaths feel good about themselves and, presumably, about being psychopaths. A GOP convention is a meeting of several thousand psychopaths feeling good about being psychopathic together. It's the feelings! It's the warm fuzzies! You have to be there!

This 'divide', sometimes compared to that of the Eloi and Morlocks, has come to define this nation. On the one hand there is a truth-based, hard-nosed empiricism to be found in support of liberals and so-called 'progressives'. For all their tough-talk, the 'conservative movement' is a house of cards, premised upon cherished fairy-tales and neurotic, often psychotic, delusions that serve no other purpose but to make the GOP base feel better about themselves. Poor babies! There is something rotten, something sick about a nation that must murder innocents abroad in order to make evil Morlocks like Dick Cheney feel good about themselves!

PRINCETON, NJ -- There is a significant political divide in beliefs about the origin of human beings, with 60% of Republicans saying humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago, a belief shared by only 40% of independents and 38% of Democrats.

Gallup has been asking this three-part question about the origin of humans since 1982. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the results for the broad sample of adult Americans show very little change over the years.

Between 43% and 47% of Americans have agreed during this 26-year time period with the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. Between 35% and 40% have agreed with the alternative explanation that humans evolved, but with God guiding the process, while 9% to 14% have chosen a pure secularist evolution perspective that humans evolved with no guidance by God.

The significantly higher percentage of Republicans who select the creationist view reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and views on the origin of humans. Republicans are significantly more likely to attend church weekly than are others, and Americans who attend church weekly are highly likely to select the creationist alternative for the origin of humans.

Implications

Although it is not a front-burner issue (particularly in light of the economy and the price of gasoline) the issue of teaching evolution in schools came up on the campaign trail last year, and could resurface in one way or the other between now and the November election.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is facing the challenge of gaining the confidence and enthusiasm of conservative Republicans. Turnout among this group could be an important factor in determining the final vote outcome in a number of key swing states. As seen here, Republicans are in general sympathetic to the creationist explanation of the origin of humans, and if the issue of what is taught in schools relating to evolution and creationism surfaces as a campaign issue, McCain's response could turn out to be quite important.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,017 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 8-11, 2008. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

I prefer facts to frames, verifiable data to punditry, reality to myth making and slick, focus group approved propaganda. Jacob Bronowski summed it all up very well in a single sentence: behave in such a way that what is true may be verified to be so!

Monday, July 07, 2008

When every other remedy is repressed, quashed or made illegal, guerrilla tactics are all we have left! Thomas Jefferson said that guerrilla tactics are justified in cases of tyranny. We have a 'right', Jefferson said, to 'abolish' a government that has become, like that of Bush, tyrannical. The revolutionary spirit of Jefferson was with those who protested Bush at Monticello! The spirit of Jefferson is 'anti-Bush'.

A defender of Bush's shameful and smirk-filled presence at Monticello said that 'fighting words' are not protected speech. Yet --our Declaration of Independence itself was made of 'fighting words'. King George III thought so. Bush himself resorted to 'fighting words' to rally a stunned populace into supporting his wars of aggression and other war crimes. 'Bring it on', he said! A fat lot of good his fighting words have done us!

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

--H. L. Mencken

Bush has been more successful at suppressing dissent at home and than he has been at fighting real 'terrorists' abroad. Armed with an Orwellian 'Patriot Act', Bush need only 'deem' you a 'terrorist' and you can be incarcerated in a hell-hole in violation of every principle put forward by real statesmen like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. Bluntly -- you are living under the absolute rule of a tyrant! Thomas Jefferson would have supported efforts to remove Bush and would most certainly be called 'radical' or 'liberal' or even 'conspiracy theorist' if he were alive today.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness"

Che Guevara said essentially the same thing in his classic treatise on guerrilla warfare.

"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."

--Che Guevara, Chapter I: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

Che might have been prescient. Certainly --the 'forces of oppression' maintain themselves in power 'against established law'. In fact, Bush has personally ordered the illegal and treasonous dismantling of 'established' Constitutional law, which he dismissed with a smirk: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"! Bush broke the law, subverted the law, ordered the law changed to suit him, and re-written the law --on the fly --with signing statements. He has ordered his attorneys to render opinions that tell him what he wants to hear, i.e, that the crimes he's already committed are made legal after he had already committed them. Many of those broken laws are found in the supreme law of the land --the Constitution.

Altering or abolishing this government is precisely what 'we' have in mind. It is precisely what had been foreseen by the founders and by the man who occupied Monticello.

David Hume wrote:

"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

--David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government

Bush has taken to new heights nefarious efforts to shut up his opposition. Due to right wing policies and media consolidation throughout the regimes of Reagan and Bush Sr, the media is but a right wing echo chamber. No one can, therefore, reasonably deny a voice to folk for whom Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is symbolic of free speech and a revolution in support of it!

Bush may have been within the letter of the law to quash 'free speech' at Monticello, but to do so on Jefferson's soil, is a poke in the eye! The downside for Bush is that it tips his hand. It betrays his anti-Jefferson mindset, his anti-Democratic, dictatorial, fascist bent.

It was Mr. Bumble in Dicken's David Copperfield who said "If that is the law, sir, then the law is a ass!" I'm with Jefferson, Che, Hume, and Mr. Bumble. I say RIGHT ON to the protesters! What passes for law under Bush is --indeed --'a ass'! I denounce the war criminal Bush for having soiled the ground Jefferson walked on. I accuse Bush of war crimes, high treason, graft, and other capital crimes as stated succinctly in US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 --significantly the very portion that Bush has worked so assiduously to rewrite but only after he had already earned himself a death penalty upon conviction.

If the US is to survive, the people must restore the rule of law. Clearly --the rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush occupies the White House. Clearly --the rule of law will forever be subverted if exceptions are made for Bush! The rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush is allowed to make it all up as he goes along, ruling by decrees called 'signing statement', an unconstitutional procedure, perhaps a crime in context. There is absolutely no authorization for this Bush 'invention' to be found anywhere in the US Constitution, just as there is absolutely no Constitutional basis whatsoever for 'executive privilege'.

Over the years, I met and interviewed numerous famous folk --politicians, some world leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Bush Sr, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xio Peng, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, et al. My interviews with Ford, Bush and Reagan always left me quietly alarmed. I can best describe these personalities with words Ada Louise Huxtable used to describe Los Angeles: 'there is no there, there!' I often left an interview feeling like the character so memorably portrayed by Kevin McCarthy in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Bush Sr in particular left me fighting the urge to run into the streets shouting: "Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone. They're here already. YOU'RE NEXT!!

Bush's Grandfather --Prescott Bush --commits treason

It has become clear that Bush family efforts to create a fascist dictatorship in America did not end with Prescott Bush. Nor did it merely resume with Bush Jr, the lesser Shrub. The Senior Bush's efforts in China must be re-examined! I have always suspected that the Chinese outsmarted the idiots of the Bush clan. At the time of Nixon's visit, the US still had a car industry, still had steel industry, still had an electronics industry! People had real jobs. And there were no Wal-Marts!

Bush Sr went to China in advance of Nixon's famous visit. Back in the USA, the Senior Bush, in a meeting room of the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, TX, told me that he ate 'aromatic meats' ['Lip of the dog'] at a diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City in Beijing. [It was much later --1992 -- that Bush actually vomitted at an official dinner, perhaps on the Prime Minister of Japan] What Bush would not tell me were the details of the Faustian bargain that he set up in China, the 'deal' that was later agreed to by Nixon and his criminal counterparts inside the Chinese regime. Bush Sr's flat, slightly nasal monotone was enough to give you chills --especially when he talked of the New World Order!

The decline and fall of the US economy can be traced to Bush Sr's trip to China where the Senior Bush laid the groundwork for Nixon's 'operatic' visit there. It was a sell-out, a Faustian bargain, a betrayal of American labor. Later, Carter was reviled but he had but four years to plug the hole in the dike! Ronald Reagan's regime must be remembered as years of 'decline and fall', specifically the decline of US manufacturing and the fall of the American labor movement.

In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Gore Vidal dates America's demise to that date in the 1980s when the US became a net debtor nation. It is no coincidence that US currency has declined vis a vis the Yuan ever since. As the years pass, as the American sun has set and that of China rises, I am increasingly curious about what Bush Sr discussed (other than eating dog meat) with his Chinese hosts over dinner in the Forbidden City.

I've always wanted to know what deals were cut! What were the specific clauses with which the Bush crime family --in service to Richard Nixon --betrayed the people of America!

Sunday, July 06, 2008

'Terrorism' is simply the response to US terrorism --perpetrated primarily by the CIA and US surrogates. The 'blowback' is the root cause of terrorism, the motivation for it, the fuel that keeps it alive. Fighting a 'war on terrorism' is just plain stupid. Such a war 'causes' terrorism and I've got the stats prove it.

'Terrorism' is a political term applied to anyone who has a different point of view. Anyone who opposes the criminal interventions of the US is --by Bush's decree --a 'terrorist'! If you merely dissent, you may be defined as a terrorist. The Bush regime is now claiming that it has the authority under the pretext of a phony war to define citizens of other nations as 'terrorists'. He demands of other nations, for example, that they provide his administration with the records of their citizens whenever Bush may 'deem' them guilty of terrorism.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, stood up in Parliament during the American 'revolution', and uttered these brave words knowing that they would appear in the record, knowing that they would be seen and read by King George III:

"If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never! never! never!"

The US military are wimps --hiding behind hi-tech gadgetry and robots. Even so --the US 'leadership' is outraged when our criminal methods, oppressions, and various tyrannical methods are met with armed opposition! How bloody stupid are our leaders! How bloody incompetent! How incredibly venal! How traitorous and criminal!

Bush has committed capital crimes for which he MUST be arrested, charged, and tried if there is to be any justice whatsoever in this world.

The illegitimate regime of George W. Bush assumed power upon a violation of US Codes having to do with 'seditious treason'.

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Bush's coup was assisted by a Republican gang of 'brownshirts', in this case 'white shirts' who physically attacked vote recounters in Florida. The effect of this felonious use of violence stopped the court ordered recount of votes in Florida until a packed Republican court could return Bush v Gore. It is not surprising that the High Court's chief idiot --Antonin Scalia --opined: "..continuing the recount would be harmful" to George W. Bush. But --last time I checked --the one getting the fewer number of votes is supposed to lose the election!

These are some of the thugs who staged a riot at the Miami canvassing board and shut down the recount. Most of these thugs are present or past employees of Congressional Republicans. The riot was led by Rep. John Sweeney of upstate NY. All of these thugs - and their Congressional bosses, led by Tom DeLay - should be prosecuted for criminally interfering with a federal election.

No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries.

No. 2. Garry Malphrus, a former staff director of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, is now deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

No. 3. Rory Cooper, who was at the National Republican Congressional Committee, later worked at the White House Homeland Security Council and was seen last week working for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

No. 6. Matt Schlapp, a former House aide and then a Bush campaign aide, has risen to be White House political director.

No. 7. Roger Morse, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. "I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight," he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview.

No. 8. Duane Gibson, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant.

No. 9. Chuck Royal was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member.

No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group.

Having stolen two elections, having flouted the Constitution, Bush assumed powers that place him above the law. He has done so upon a series of well-planned, malicious frauds, all of which are cited in justification for his tyrannical usurpation of every right guaranteed individuals in the Bill of Rights. It is circular, delusional logic, symptomatic of psychos!

This unprecedented seizure of absolute power upon lies and frauds amounts to high treason. It is tyranny! Some of the crimes Bush has committed subsequent to these various usurpations are punishable by death!

Bush, an illegitimate 'ruler', has left the sovereign people of the US no other choice but revolution.

'The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.'

--Thomas Jefferson

I vote for spilling the blood of tyrants! The blood of true patriots is in short enough supply already! A Federal Grand Jury, perhaps one already convened, should indict George W. Bush for his MANY violations of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441. That's a CAPITAL CRIME and it's an open shut case against Bush. A fair court upon proven evidence and the rule of law will sentence George W. Bush to death!

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

Secondly, Vince Bugliosi has proposed that Bush be charged with MASS MURDER in connection with the deaths of US servicemen whom Bush sent to their deaths upon a malicious fraud!

Bugliosi has proposed that Bush be prosecuted for mass murder.

There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public — lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.

...

On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to “provoke a confrontation” with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly “U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions and that would justify war. Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.

...

When it became clear that the whole purpose of Bush’s prewar campaign — to get Hussein to disarm — was being (or already had been) met, Bush and his people came up with a demand they had never once made before — that Hussein resign and leave Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Bush said in a speech to the nation that, “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.” Military conflict — the lives of thousands of young Americans on the line — because Bush trumped up a new line in the sand?

...

The Bush administration put undue pressure on US intelligence agencies to provide it with conclusions that would help them in their quest for war. Bush’s former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, said that on September 12, 2001, one day after 9/11, “The President in a very intimidating way left us — me and my staff — with the clear indication that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11.”

Bush said on October 7, 2002, “We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade,” and that “Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.” Of Hussein, he said on November 1, 2002, “We know he’s got ties with Al Qaeda.”

Even after Bush admitted on September 17, 2003, that he had “no evidence” that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, he audaciously continued, in the months and years that followed, to clearly suggest, without stating it outright, that Hussein was involved in 9/11.

On March 20, 2006, Bush said, “I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on America.”

Briefly, the war against Iraq was begun upon a series of deliberate frauds which Bush perpetrated upon the people of the United States. Therefore, not only is the war against Iraq a war crime prosecutable in US Courts for the violations it represents under the above cited US Codes, Title 18[op cit], but also in US Federal Courts for the 'mass murder' of some 4,000 US armed forces personnel that have died upon this evil fraud. According to Bugliosi, the penalty is death!

The measure exempting US troops from 'war crimes' was introduced by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) as an amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001, on May 8, 2001. It passed the House 282-137 on May 10 and introduced as S. 857 in the Senate on May 9 by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC), Zell Miller (D-GA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John Warner (R-VA), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Frank Murkowski (R-AK) --the usual suspects!

The bill authorized Bush "...to use all means (including the provision of legal assistance) necessary to bring about the release of covered US persons and covered allied persons held captive by or on behalf of the Court [International Criminal Court, ICC, in the Hague]. Some highlights:

The President is authorized to invade The Hague. Specifically, the bill empowers Bush to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release from captivity of US or Allied personnel detained or imprisoned against their will by or on behalf of the Court.

No US governmental entity --including State or local governments and court of any US jurisdiction --may cooperate with the ICC in arrests, extraditions, searches and seizures, taking of evidence, seizure of assets, or similar matters.

No ICC agent may conduct any investigation in the US.

No classified national security information can be transferred directly or indirectly to the ICC or to countries Party to the Rome Statute.

These provisions are in addition to existing US law (the 2000-2001 Foreign Relations Authorization Act) which prohibits any US funds going to the ICC once it has been established unless the Senate has given its advice and consent to the Rome Treaty.

This measure was introduced before 911 in anticipation of a 'War on Terrorism' that only those with guilty foreknowledge could have anticipated, a 'war' that would include US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. Certainly no one but Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, the Project for the New American Century and high level members of the Bush administration could have anticipated the improbable series of events leading to the American quagmire in Iraq. Certainly, they are not 'psychic' despite a mantra repeated ad nauseam post 911: "No one could have foreseen...."! In fact, only the Bush administration 'foresaw' 911 in such detail, that they planned in advance to make legal the very laws they have in fact violated in the post-911 world. What incredible coincidences!

What war crimes were Bush and his junta planning even then that would require they be immunized from the prosecution of their intended crimes?

Tortures that were most certainly ordered by Bush and anticipated by then House Speaker Tom Delay who sponsored legislation to exempt the 'President' from war crimes prosecution. Since that time, Bush 'lawyers' have rewritten US Codes prescribing the death penalty for specific violations of the Geneva Conventions. Their aim: to make legal Bush's crimes but only after he had already committed them. DeLay's intent, however, was to make legal the many crimes that Bush was already planning. I want to know how to what extent Bush had, in fact, planned 911, Afghanistan, Iraq even before he sought the office. These are questions that must be put to him while he is under oath before a Federal Grand Jury.

When he learned of Bush plans to commit war crimes including torture, former Atty Gen John Ashcroft said: 'history will not judge this kindly'. History may conclude that John Ashcroft was, in the final analysis, complicit with the Bush/Yoo conspiracy to make 'legal' numerous crimes against humanity that Bush had intended to commit in our name. There was, indeed, precedent but not the kind sought by Bush. It was Reinhard Heydrich who convened senior Nazi brass at Wannsee. Their mission: cook up a rationale, some legalistic mumbo jumbo, that will make mass murder and genocide legal!

If Bush refuses to respond to an indictment by a Federal Grand Jury, then Federal Martials should be ordered by the court to simply march into the White House, serve Bush, arrest the lousy bastard and charge him with murder!

Then --when the gauntlet has been thrown --we will see just how many loyal 'Praetorians' will rush to his defense when he seen to have been indicted by a bona fide Federal Grand Jury who will have, in fact and in law, the duty to decide whether this lousy liar lives or whether he dies for the many capital crimes that he has committed!

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